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PLEASE NOTE: Admission to the event is free and open to the public, but advanced registration is required. Reserve your spot now: https://bit.ly/appiah-clark.
How is it possible to consider the world a moral community when there is so much disagreement about the nature of morality? In this talk, based on his award-winning book Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah presents answers that are grounded in a new ethics which celebrates our common humanity, while at the same time offering a practical way to manage our differences. He offers a new approach to living a moral life in the modern age, where the competing claims of “a Clash of Civilizations” on one hand, and a groundless moral relativism on the other, can make such a project seem impossible. With wit, reason, and humanity, Appiah explores some of the central ethical questions of our time.
Named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 public intellectuals, one of the Carnegie Corporation’s “Great Immigrants,” and awarded a National Humanities Medal by The White House, Appiah is currently Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and has previously taught at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Ghana. He considers readers’ ethical quandaries in a weekly column as “The Ethicist” for The New York Times Magazine. From 2009 to 2012 he served as President of the PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization. Appiah’s most recent books include: As If: Idealization and Ideals; Mistaken Identities; and The Lies That Bind.
A book signing will follow immediately after the event. Cosmopolitanism and other works by Kwame Anthony Appiah will be available for purchase.
This event is sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities at Clark University.